A selection of 150 cities within Slavs and Tatars’ Eurasian remit, Love Me, Love Me Not: Changed Namesplucks the petals off the past to reveal an impossible thorny stem: a lineage of names changed by the course of the region’s grueling history. Some cities divulge a resolutely Asian or Muslim heritage, so often forgotten in some citizens’ quest, at all costs, for a European, Christian identity. Others vacillate almost painfully, and others with numbing repetition, entire metropolises caught like children in the spiteful back and forth of a custody battle. Love Me, Love Me Notcelebrates the multilingual, carnivalesque complexity readily eclipsed today by nationalist struggles for simplicity and permanence. If, from the foggy perch of the early 21st century, we tend to see cities like living organisms that are born, grow and even die, why should their names be any different?
Love Me, Love Me Not: Changed Names, 2010, offset print, 22.5 × 14 cm, 150 pages, black and white throughout, glue binding, gloss-laminated softcover, edition of 250, numbered, published by onestar press
